When Giving Unites God’s People

Sermon Transcript

Well do your best to hold back your applause but we’ve reached the end of our giving series. (audience laughing) Yeah. So you can tell your friends who said they’d be back at the end of it, that it’s time to come back to church now. I know it’s been a little uncomfortable and some of you have said it’s been uncomfortable for you too, Pastor Mike, but we’ve enjoyed it. That’s very kind of you to say but, you know, it is one of those topics. It is a little uncomfortable you have to admit, talking about giving, it’s a hard thing. But we’re going to have to run into it because we’re committed to, you know, verse-by-verse exposition of the Bible. And we picked Second Corinthians to work our way through and Chapters 8 and 9 of Second Corinthians, this is an extended discussion about giving. The problem in Jerusalem and the Corinthian Christians is a lot like, as I’ve said, the Orange County of the ancient world and they’re pretty well off and upper middle class, and Paul’s leaning into them after the Macedonian Christians who are not as well off had given sacrificially. And he’s writing this letter saying hey, I’m sending Titus and the boys down, and I’m going to come in, we’re going to collect this, and we’re going to go off and bring this relief to Jerusalem and you just need to be ready. And this has been a topic that we’ve had to lean into.

Now, the thing about money is we have to deal with it all the time. I mean, every single day because money is just a part of our lives. And, you know, you tap your debit card, they hand you the sandwich, you eat the sandwich, and you move on with your day. You, you know, put down the money, you get the product, you take the product home and you enjoy it and that’s that. Even the big things, right? You pay the tuition, you take the class, you move on with your life. You buy the car, you drive the car, you know, and that’s that, end of story. You can think about giving that way and you would be remiss if you did. That would be a mistake. We don’t want to start thinking about giving in the same way. And it’s easy to do that because you can think about the two kinds of giving we’ve talked about. The vertical giving you kind of say, well, okay, I’m going to set up my giving to God through the church like, you know, Pastor Mike alluded to from First Corinthians Chapter 9. And, you know, I can just have that taken out of my, you know, account. And every twice a month, I’ll have that go over there and it’ll go to the church, and the church will pay the bills and check the box of an obedient Christian. Good. Okay. Done. That’s that. Move on with my life.

 

And now this series about horizontal giving. I can look out for needs and there might be someone in my small group, they’re struggling, and maybe they were laid off or couldn’t pay their medical bills. Or maybe they’re between jobs. They can’t pay their rent. And I’ll see the need and man, I’ll give them the money. I’ll Zelle them some cash and you know, I’ll meet the need and done. Move on and feel good about it. I’ve been obedient. You could think about it that way but you shouldn’t, because it’s not as transactional and as simple and just as obvious as that. Because it’s not like a gumball machine. Right? The transactions of our finances are like that. We put in our quarter and we get the gumball. Giving, like we put in our quarter and then the quarter goes out the back side to someone else. That’s how we view our giving.

 

But it’s not like that at all according to the very end of this discussion in the last four verses of Chapter 9 in Second Corinthians. Paul is going to say it’s much more like one of those machines that we used to see sometimes, those cause-and-effect machines. I don’t know what they called them but sometimes you see them at the mall, I’ve seen them at the airports before where the cue ball is put in and the ramp goes down. Do you remember these things? And then all of a sudden things start happening. Levers start moving and wheels start spinning and lights go off and bells ring, and all of a sudden now everything’s going and another ball comes in and it just goes nuts, everything’s crazy. The one ball gets in this thing and there are all of these, you know, chain reaction events. And that’s more of how we ought to see giving because giving is very different than the quid pro quo of just sliding my card and getting my product and moving on with my day. We ought to have a much more three-dimensional view. We ought to have a broader view of how our giving works.

 

Now, we kind of touched on it last week and I kind of recoiled a little bit and said we’ll get into that more in the next passage. So I want us to look at these last four verses of our whole study in looking at this giving. And though most of it has been obviously about horizontal giving when we see needs in this direction, relationally, we’ve had to touch on vertical giving too as we give to God through our church. But we’re going to see how important it is that we understand the chain reaction of events and the way we ought to see this as radically significant. It has a big effect, the significance of your generosity, because it’ll be motivating for you if you can just keep in mind the things that God is trying to tell us here in these last four verses.

 

So open your Bibles. Let’s look at this and see if it can’t motivate us and get us thinking more properly, more biblically, to think rightly about the impact of our generosity. Verses 12, 13, 14 and 15 of Second Corinthians Chapter 9, Second Corinthians Chapter 9 verses 12 through 15. I’ll read it from the English Standard Version. Here’s how it reads, “For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.” That’s what we touched on last week as you can remember from verse 11. “By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and all others, while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you.” And then he breaks out with this ending statement, which was a lot like Second Corinthians Chapter 8 verse 9, you might remember. And that’s more of a didactic, instructive statement about Christ being this great example. But here he just breaks out in praise. “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” Which is unstated, but we know exactly what he’s talking about, because back in Second Corinthians Chapter 8 verse 9, Christ is the ultimate, “though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” That’s the ultimate gift, the inexpressible gift, the gift that we can’t ever match but is the standard, the benchmark of all giving. Okay.

 

Let’s make some sense of this. And though there are plenty of things here, I’ve put them into three buckets because why not? That’s how most sermons work. And let’s try and figure this out. How can we get this? And as you see if you have the worksheet downloaded or if you have a printed version of it, I want to take the first part of verse 12 and the bottom of verse 13. There are some great words here that I want to kind of underscore for you and try and get all of this to give it a texture of what it means in our giving. Now it says not only in the middle of verse 12, “not only supplying the needs of saints,” but I want to focus on that because it is doing that. And he says at the bottom of verse 13, whatever they’re doing, the “submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others.” So we know you’re giving to these Jerusalem Christians and it is supplying the needs. But he puts it in terms that are really big.

 

Now, I warned you about this, this word that is used and translated “ministry” in verse 12 and it also shows up again later here in verse 13, “by the approval of this service.” That’s the same word as I warned you the last time we transliterate into English the word “deacon,” at least one form of deacon, and that kind of elevates it, at least in our thinking, we know that as an office in the church, a ministry leader ministry. So that kind of elevates it. And then the next word, “the ministry of this service,” and that word is a word that’s often used as almost a synonym of the word “deacon.” And that’s a word that we transliterate also into English and we get the word “liturgy” from that. So we get this kind of word deacon and liturgy here stuck together, this ministry of this service. Now, liturgy is an interesting word because the root of that is a compound word which means public and work, public work. And secular Greek is describing that as someone doing something for the public good, public works, that makes sense. And then yet it was kind of taken into the usage in the Bible, mostly you can go back to before the time of Christ and to the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament, and it describes the priests who are giving their service to the people of God. And as they’re working on the Sabbath in particular and they’re doing their work sacrificing and shewbread and, you know, candles and incense and all that, they’re doing that in service to the people of Israel and they’re mediating this worship to God. They’re working, but they’re working on behalf of the people of God.

 

It’s also used in the New Testament. Think about Luke Chapter 1, when Zechariah’s number came up and he goes into the temple, it was his turn to do his service as a priest. And that’s when he gets told that he’s going to have a child and he didn’t believe it so was he struck mute and all that. You remember the story, but that word is used. He’s doing his priestly service. That’s how it shows up in the New Testament. So that’s another elevating word. And then look, it’s the service to whom? What does he say? Service to whom? The Jerusalem boys. No, he calls them what? Saints. And again, if you grew up in a Catholic church or some, you know, Orthodox church, you see that word as a word that doesn’t seem to fit unless you’ve been, you know, dead for a long time and have some miracles ascribed to you. But that’s a word that if you know it in the New Testament context you know that means that’s anybody who is a Christian. But it’s an elevating word because it’s the word in the New Testament language for a Holy One, holy not because you’re morally perfect, but holy because you are literally, the technical definition is that you’re set apart. You’re no longer out there, you know, just one of them. But now you’re in here, you’re in the family of God. You’re adopted.

 

So think about all those words, right? That’s big. Not to mention the word that’s translated “contribution” at the bottom of verse 13. Now, something about the “submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ.” You confess that, you know, you are all about the good news of Christ, “and the generosity of your contribution.” Now, here’s another hidden Greek word that I know you all know, right? Most of you, I’m sure you know this word, but it’s translated “contribution.” And this is a word that was all big, at least when I was growing up in the 70s in youth rooms, it was all postered all over the place on the tie-dye T-shirts we made and all the rest. It’s the word “Koinōnia.” You’ve all heard that, right? And it’s usually translated as koinōnia, which is translated as what? Nobody? Fellowship. Thank you. Fellowship. Okay? So here’s a word that does start to help us think through and if you know your Bible, you think, okay, that was a big emphasis in the early part of the book of Acts, like Acts Chapter 2 and Acts Chapter 4 when it talked about they were all there together, they had all things in common, even that word, right? That word “common,” that’s the root of the word koinōnia. The word “common” means they didn’t consider their stuff like their own. If there was a need, they met the need. So that by Acts Chapter 4 it says, “there was not a needy person among them.” Right? And the fellowship was that we were all together. We have all things in common and we’re fellowshipping.

 

Well, that’s an interesting translation here. But it’s in the context of we’re all a part of the same family. Well, you’re way over there across the Mediterranean. You’re all the way over in Israel, right? You’re in Jerusalem. These people in Corinth are probably never going to meet these people in Jerusalem. But they see the need, they see the connection they have as we’re fellow saints, we’re in this family of God, right? We’re all a part of this family. We’re all declared righteous, right? And we know that there’s a need and so God has given us grace by having money that we could sacrifice for you. You’re struggling probably because of the famine, Acts Chapter 11, there was a prediction of a famine. And in Claudius’ reign there was a famine. It’s historically extra-biblically confirmed and they’re probably struggling with that. Maybe persecution. Whatever the reason was, they needed that money to relieve them and so they were going to send it off. They probably would never, you know, see the effect of it. They’d only hear about it through letters. But they were going to do this as an act of their fellowship, their contribution, their involvement in saying you’re with us. All of this was about their connection in Christ.

 

Now, I’ve tried to say there are aspects of giving I’ve tried to deal with in the last seven sermons, six before this one. And trying to help you see there are aspects of giving that I wanted to kind of be comprehensive because we’re dealing with a topic. And I’ve said this could include your neighbor’s slab leak or their broken-down car, or, you know, there’s an issue in your cul-de-sac and you’re going to involve yourself in that, and it’s going to ask you to stay the extra hour or spend the extra dollar and go the extra mile. Fine. It can do that. Right? You’re going to, as you have opportunity, do good to all men. But as Galatians Chapter 6 says, “especially … the household of faith.” So we really want to look first and foremost as we think about the passage here, Second Corinthians Chapters 8 and 9, like I want to see this. It elevates it so much that I want to see my generosity. If I find the joy in generosity and this virtue growing in my life, as we end this, I want to see one of the effects is when I give in the name of Christ to meet needs, I am really, I need to realize that that act of generosity is strengthening the church. And that’s a big word that ought to be elevated in our minds.

 

Number one in your outline, write it down. You need to “Realize Your Generosity Strengthens the Church,” the people of God, this institution that God has given his blood for, this thing that God is doing, the thing going on this planet that Christ said, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” You are helping even if you just help this week, one person gets through a hard time because you’re willing to spend the extra dollar to see them through this. You’re helping them. You’re strengthening the church and these words, ministry, service, contribution, these are all elevated words, and saint. These are big words Paul is using to show this as a big deal. It’s not a big deal when you tap your debit card to get a ham sandwich, that’s not a big deal. I mean, it’s important and you have to do it every day. But when you say, I’m going to write this check to help this guy pay his rent, that’s a big deal. That’s a really big deal to God. And God sees this as a big deal. And it’s doing something to strengthen the family of God, to strengthen the Church of Jesus Christ.

 

Now, one of the things I’m trying to do is mop up a lot of things in this last sermon in this series because I know when we think about horizontal giving, even though God may do what he did to me this week, and that is sometimes when you’re preaching on things and maybe when you’re being preached to about things, God opens up doors of opportunity to apply it. Has he done that to any of you? He often does that to the preacher. I got a call out of the blue. Not a person in this church, so he didn’t know I was ripe for this. But financial need, big financial need. He reached out to me. Bold enough to ask. And I know this guy. I’ve known him for years. He fell on hard times. I’ve been counseling, kind of, you know, through text messages and all that. And he just laid it out there. I have a need. And so, you know, of course, I thought, well, I’m preaching on all this, right? Of course I can’t close my heart of compassion against him. Right? I had to practice everything I’m preaching. So yeah, and I did the maximum amount that was needed and I did that. And so God may open up opportunities like that.

 

But I think to myself, here we’re living in, you know, a place where there’s a million, as I talked about at one installment of this, where there’s a million of these social services, where we’re rarely going to see someone saying, if you don’t help me, I’m going to be living under the underpass this week, right? Rarely are people going to miss a meal in our culture, right? Certainly in the United States of America and in Orange County, California. So I wanted to add one thing to this series to maybe help you recognize, as my mentor once said, or one of my mentors back early in my ministry, we need to kind of look even at the cultural standards that we live in and say, okay, in the body of Christ, if I’m going to strengthen the church, I’m not just looking about it is someone going to go without food or someone is going to be kicked out of their apartment, or someone not going to be able to live and pay all their medical bills this month. It may be that everyone’s copacetic as it relates to all the basics, but is someone needing something that maybe would just make their life kind of get it up to where it ought to be? Right? And that’s the kind of generosity you need to be on the lookout for.

 

And I want to tie this together with something I said a couple of weeks ago regarding budgeting. We talked about budgeting, and the budgeting we think about vertical giving, of course, you need to budget as you should, to honor the Lord from your wealth, from the first fruits. So you should be giving vertically to God through your church. First Corinthians Chapter 9 required the decision about how much is according to you, but you need to be giving to your church. Great. Check that box. Right? But it’s more than that because there are a lot of ramifications to that. But then I said you should be budgeting to give horizontally. And if you do that you may go through a month, two months, three months, I didn’t see anybody who was in desperate need. Fine. You don’t have to. That’s the great thing about budgeting to give and to be generous in a horizontal sense. You budget, which means you decide to live on less so that you can give more.

 

And when you do that I want you to think more like the Shunammite woman. Because the Shunammite woman in the Old Testament is really a great example of generosity, creative generosity in trying to be a creative woman who says how can I be generous in a way that would be a blessing? It’s not like someone’s going to starve to death, right? But I’m going to do something over and above. And I love this and maybe it’s the reason she is introduced to us as a wealthy person as we looked at last week. Maybe God is saying, I love to shovel resources in the direction of the Shunammite woman because look at how she lives. She is a generous woman.

 

So let’s meet a generous woman who may help us in a time, in a small group, in a sub-congregation where you’re probably not going to meet many people who are destitute. Okay, let’s turn there. Second Kings Chapter 4. Let’s take a look at the Shunammite woman and learn from her. Second Kings Chapter 4. Drop down to verse 8. Elisha. Elisha is not Elijah, as you know, but he succeeded Elijah. And he goes to a place called Shunem. Shunem is near Mount Gilboa. I remember that’s where Saul dies with his sons, which is now the only ski slope in Israel. If you ever go to Israel with us it’s not far from the Valley of Megiddo, we’ll always go there to the ruins of Megiddo. But anyway, a little village named “Shunem, where a wealthy woman lived.” Are you with me on this? Second Kings 4:8. So “Elisha went on to Shunem, where a wealthy woman lived, and she urged him to eat some food.” Okay, he probably wasn’t starving, but nevertheless she says hey, you have some food. “So whenever he passed that way, he would turn in there to eat food.” Okay. That’s great, that’s good. And is that generous? Sure it is.

 

But she puts it in turbocharge. Look at verse 9. “She said to her husband, ‘Behold, now.’” Now again that’s such ancient, archaic language. But you do know what behold means, right? Behold means “look.” When you see that word, look. Look here. Right? Look now. Let’s give this some thought. “I know that this is a holy man of God who is continually passing our way.” This is a holy man. This guy’s important. “Let us make a small room on the roof with walls and put there for him a bed, a table, a chair, and a lamp, so that whenever he comes to us, he can go in there.” Now, usually we just go right past that and go on to other stuff and there’s a lot of interesting stuff that happens after this, but let’s just stop right there for a second. That is an amazing woman right there. I just love that. Think about it. Yeah, you need a sandwich when you’re passing through. But no, you’re a holy man of God. Which, by the way, just think of that word, holy man. Every single person in your small group, if they are a confessed follower of Christ, guess what they are? A saint. They’re a holy man or a holy woman of God set apart for God. I just love that’s the way she describes Elisha. Holy man.

 

I understand he’s a prophet. He’s a big dude. I get it, his resume is more impressive than the people in your small group, but still a child of God. And she wants to do good to the holy man. And I love the list, man. I think about it. Here’s a guy he’s always quoting, you know, Moses, a guy who probably has some scrolls and he comes through. I’m going to give him a room. Hey, honey, we don’t go much on the roof anymore, you know, and it can be windy so we have to build some walls up there and we can build them, can we get them a table? We got some money. We have a guy who can build a table. Let’s get him a nice chair. Make sure it’s comfortable. Get some padding. Oh, and a bed too, because maybe he’ll get tired and sleep up there. Oh, and let’s get him a lamp. I just love that at night he might want to get up and read some scrolls or write a few things. Amazing. Amazing. This is a woman thinking creatively about how to bless a saint.

 

So when you think about living on less so that you can give more, you don’t need to wait for someone in dire need. I want you to say how can I bless a saint in my church? How can I bless someone who just can move them from here to there? And it could be maybe because Elisha, maybe there were a lot of people in her neighborhood who all had a place to study, and she knows Elisha doesn’t. Well, maybe there is a cultural deficiency and you think, oh, this person doesn’t have that. This person doesn’t have what most people have. And I know they’re not destitute. They’re not out in the Costco parking lot begging for money. But let’s give them something just so they can get up to speed. As you budget to be generous horizontally just be more like the Shunammite woman. Think of ways to do it. Now what happens to her, right? I know that takes the spotlight and it kind of makes us forget what she did, but what God did for her based on what she did, and I’m not saying there’s a direct connection here, causation, but there’s correlation. There’s certainly something that God does in response in a generous woman’s life, pretty remarkable, and has nothing to do with her finances, although she’s introduced as a wealthy woman. Maybe, as I said, God’s providing “seed to the sower and bread” for those who eat. God, I’m sure loves a cheerful giver. And I see this in the Shunammite woman. The saints we should give to our vertical giving as well. We should think about how God’s people are amply supplied when we give.

 

Back to our text real quick. I just want to get the second part of it in verse 13, the second part of verse 13, “the generosity of,” this koinonia, “your contribution,” this gift of commonality. Can I turn you once you look at this and read this again with me, and we’ll go to the book of Acts real quick? Second Corinthians Chapter 9 verse 13, “their approval of this service,” there’s that word deacon, “they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others.” So it’s not just that you get your arm twisted by Paul, because that’s not it. It’s not compulsory. But they’re seeing that you’re generous people and the generous people that you are is because you’ve submitted yourself to what you’ve said. You’ve confessed that you’re all about the good news of the gospel. So you’ve practiced what you’ve preached, right? You do what you say. You’re not just all talk. You don’t just love in word and in talk, but you love in deed and in truth. So we’ve watched this. You’ve said that you are followers of Christ. You’ve said that you follow the one who laid down his life for us, and you are laying down your lives for the brothers, you’re sacrificing. So you were doing what you say. You believe the things that you say and you’re proving it by your deeds.

 

So all of this is proof. And there’s something about this as we started to touch on before in the series that there’s a validation of our character, of our doctrine. We’re adorning the gospel of Christ, as we said in the book of Titus, that idea of not pilfering, not being all about money, not preferring money over people, it does something to adorn or make the gospel look good. And if we’re all about the gospel then we know that people are more important than money. And in this passage here again they’re giving shows that. Now back to the book of Acts real quick, Acts Chapter 2, just to show you these connections real quick. Acts Chapter 2. Now, I know you’ve seen this. We talk about it often, but I just wanted to show you how this all works here. First, let’s look at the word “fellowship” in verse 42 of Acts Chapter 2, all the way down to the bottom. Verse 42, “And they devoted themselves,” here’s the early church, “to the apostles’ teaching,” that all starts there, “and to the fellowship.” That’s the koinonia, right? The fellowship. They’re part of this group. They all are common. “The breaking of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done among the apostles.” Right? Second Corinthians 12:12. That’s the sign of the apostles.

 

Verse 44, “And all who believe were together and had all things in common,” the root of the word “koinonia,” that they, “had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.” So that’s the basis of them saying if anyone has a need, great. Now this was unique in that they didn’t know how long Christ was going to leave them for. Right? They said, how long? And Christ said, “It’s not for you to know times or seasons.” So they were hanging out, remember they were all brought there because of this festival, the Feast of Pentecost. So, I mean, there was a unique thing going on here as people traveled and a lot of people were sticking around and so they kind of had this commune thing going. Now over to Acts Chapter 4 real quick. Acts Chapter 4, go to the bottom of that chapter. Look at verse 32, at the bottom of Chapter 4. “Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said of any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common.” And there it is again. Everything is in common and, same pattern. “And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.”

 

Now here’s the goal. “There was not a needy person among them, for as many of the owners of land or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” Then we meet, “Joseph, who was called by the apostles as Barnabas (which means son of encouragement)” and he certainly is. He’s a very generous man. “A Levite, a native of Cyprus, sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” Now all this to say that many of these people looking at these two passages, they try to get to the place where the mayor of New York is and start to talk about the “warmth of collectivism.” Right? And I just want to tell you that’s not what this passage is teaching. Matter of fact, you could try to make a lot of the pronouns in the passage, because these things like verse 37, “the field that belonged to him.” From beginning to end the Bible teaches private property rights. Absolutely, right?

 

But it gets very clear in the next chapter. And all I’m saying is this: you don’t have really the act of giving unless you have the stewardship of you having the direction of what God has given you. Right? Giving, as we’ve seen in our series, is about you taking what God has entrusted to you and making the volitional decision to give it. Now, in their minds they said, hey, “Mi casa es su casa,” which means “My house is your house” or what is mine is yours. And they saw it that way. They were so quick to give it up. That was a mental thing, but it was theirs until they gave it up. Right? They weren’t coerced into giving anything up. And this is where we have to recognize that God has given us this great opportunity to prove our theology by giving things up, by living on less to give more. And this is the picture. Look at now Ananias and Sapphira, after everyone was hailing Barnabas, well, son of encouragement. Ananias and Sapphira, they “sold a piece of property, and with his wife’s knowledge,” verse 2, “they kept back for himself some of the proceeds and brought only a part of it and laid it at the apostles’ feet.” But they made like it was all of it. “Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back for yourself part of the proceeds of the land?”

 

Now notice carefully what he says, “while it remained unsold, did it not remain your own?” A rhetorical question, a rhetorical answer. Of course it was your own. “And after it was sold, was it not at your disposal?” Yes it was. See, this is where communalism or communism or socialism or the warmth of collectivism, it is not what the Bible teaches, right? You have at your disposal whatever you have that is yours as a steward to direct as you, before God, choose. But just like Christ had his glory in Philippians Chapter 2, his majesty that he then the “Kenosis,” he emptied himself, he chose to lay aside the independent use of his attributes to come and be found among us as a human being, and to lay down his life for us. He chose to do that. And that’s the sacrifice. There’s no compulsion there, right? There’s no gun at his back to do it. This is the voluntary giving. And that act of giving, there’s the proving of our theology. There’s the echo of what it means to be in step with the great giver of the Bible. Right? The one who shows us what it means to put other people’s interests above our own. And it may be that the language of Acts Chapter 2 and the language of Acts Chapter 4 almost get ahead of itself by saying, hey, whatever I have is yours. But we know what you mean, right? We know what you mean, right? It is yours.

 

When I say whatever’s in the refrigerator consider it your own. I don’t expect you when you leave to take out your backpack and start taking all, you know, my condiments home with you. But if you need it while we are here, sure, have it, right? But don’t take my peanut butter out of the cupboard and take it home with you or sell it on the street corner. That’s not the idea. So the point here is we want to be the kinds of people who show our submission to our profession, that we believe exactly what the Bible says, that we should do all the things he’s commanded us and say we’re just doing what we ought to do, right? We call him Lord, Lord, because we do what he tells us. And he says the commandment he’s given us in John Chapter 13 is to “love one another: just as I loved you.” We’re just echoing that standard. And “by this all people,” verse 35 of John Chapter 13, “will know that you are my disciples.” And that’s exactly what Paul is telling him, the Jerusalem Christians are going to say about the Corinthian Christians. When you give they’re going to say that you can tell that you’re the disciples. We can tell that your confession to the gospel is real, because look at how you’re giving. Look at the grace of God active in your life as you give.

 

All right. Back to our text, Second Corinthians Chapter 9 verse 12, bottom of verse 12. It’s not only supplying the needs of the saints which is a big deal. There are many facets that we tried to look at, “but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.” Now, we touched on that at the bottom of verse 11. “You’ll be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgivings to God.” So we know that was part of it. We left some of that for today. Verse 13, “By their approval of this service,” there’s that word again, that deacon service, that ministry, “they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession.” Okay.

 

So we have two things here, thanksgiving and then a bigger word “glory.” They’ll glorify God. All right. Let’s put one word to kind of encompass both of those words. And let’s call it worship. And this is something that the Apostle Paul is trying to say which is never going to happen when you buy a sandwich at the deli this week. Number two, you need to “Realize Your Generosity Produces Worship,” and it does, I can assure you of that. When you give it produces worship. Right? And let’s just think vertically, even though our text is primarily horizontal. But if you give vertically and you give to your church as you should because you’re giving to God, just like in the Old Testament, they gave to the Levites but they were really giving to God. Right? You were just aiding worship. You’re fueling worship. You’re underwriting worship. It’s the thing that makes the worship possible. And then when you give horizontally to other people, of course, what’s going to happen is the first thing that’s going to happen is thanksgiving. Of course, that is the essence of worship, by the way. Okay.

 

Once you jot that down, turn with me to Psalm 107. Let’s drive this home and let’s think of it practically. And I’m sure all of you can think of examples of this in your own life, and I hope you felt it being on the receiving end. And I hope you’ve heard about it being on the giving end of this. Psalm 107. Sometimes we overthink worship and it can be as simple as this. I know we think worship as ascribing to the Lord the glory that’s due his name. That’s a good definition, a good biblical definition. But to “ascribe to the Lord the glory due his name.” The word glory is a little ambiguous in people’s minds. But to say, okay, we’re worshiping him for who he is, but we know a lot about who he is by what he does. And so we’re thanking him often for what he does, which is really glorifying him for who he is. So take a look at this first line from Psalm 107 verse 1 and you’ll see this come together. “Oh give thanks to the Lord,” to Yahweh, “for he is good.” Okay. We’re giving thanks to the Lord, to God, because he’s good. Well, okay. Thanks God for being good. Why? How do we know you’re good? Because his hesed, his covenant love, his faithful love, “his steadfast love endures forever!”

 

Well, how do we know that? Verse 2, “Let the redeemed of the Lord,” of Yahweh, “say so, whom he’s redeemed from trouble.” Well, he’s gotten out of a jam, who is delivered from the enemy. Okay. Now, when we think of the word “redeemed” we instantly go to the big eschatological end of it all. Certainly, as New Testament Christians, we think about redeemed from the penalty of our sins and there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s the ultimate redemption, I get it. But a lot of the times in the Psalms in particular, we’re thinking about something more temporal. Right? He’s gotten us out of some battle. He’s gotten us out of some famine. He’s gotten us out of some temporal trouble. And there’s nothing wrong with that, because that fuels our worship. And that certainly fuels our worship by the first step, and that is giving thanks to God. And Paul is saying when the Jerusalem Christians who’ve had a hard time feeding their kids and maybe their kids have gone without a meal yesterday and the day before, and they’re crying and crying themselves to sleep at night. And all of a sudden Paul pulls up with his entourage and they have big bags of money. And now they can go with all the inflated prices in the marketplace, and they can go and feed their children. They’re going to be thanking God for that. They’re going to give praise to God for that. And they’re going to say, God is faithful. God’s love on us is faithful.

 

Now examples, right? “Let the redeemed of the Lord say so, whom he’s redeemed from trouble and he’s gathered in from the lands, from the east and from the west, from the north and from the south.” Now he gives an example which is not identical to what we’re dealing with but there are some parallels. “Some have wandered in desert wastes, finding no way to a city to dwell in; hungry and thirsty,” that’s a parallel, “their soul fainted within them.” I’m sure there are plenty of people on the edge in Jerusalem, right? Can you imagine that? “Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble.” How many times do you think the prayer meetings among the Christians in Jerusalem did they pray about their plight in Jerusalem whether it was persecution or famine or whatever? They were praying. And the money could certainly help. And Paul was collecting the money, having it collected, and they were going to get some relief. “Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted with them. They cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He led them by a straight way till they reached a city to dwell in. Let them thank the Lord for,” his covenant love, “his steadfast love,” his faithful love, “for his wondrous works to the children of man! For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.”

 

Now how does that happen? It usually happens through some human intermediary. There is usually some agency in that, there’s usually somebody there that is in between the fulfillment of all that. And all I’m saying is it ends up being an expression, an outburst of praise to God. And that’s where your giving is a catalytic lighting of a fuse of someone praising God. You have to know that that’s what happens when you give to someone, even when you give to a church. Trust me. And I know this. I mean, I’ve been working for a church now for 40 years, right? There’s a great deal of thanksgiving that comes even when the budget is met every year. A great deal of worship. Not to mention when someone is in need and that need is met. And here are these people in Jerusalem whom Paul is thinking they’re going to overflow with thanksgiving.

 

Keep reading, verse 10. It’s not just because something was foisted upon people. Sometimes people get themselves into trouble. Verse 10, “Some sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, prisoners in affliction and irons.” Why? Because “they had rebelled against the words of God and spurned the counsel of the Most High.” They did wrong and they were paying the penalty for doing wrong. “So he bowed their hearts down with hard labor; they fell down, with none to help.” Well, they got themselves in a mess. You made your bed, you have to sleep in it now. Yeah, but much like in the book of Judges, they did earn it but “they cried out to the Lord in their trouble.” And then you can fill in between these two lines. God is gracious. God is merciful, just like he’s been to you. And “he delivered them from their distress. He brought them out of darkness and the shadow of death and burst their bonds apart.” Now I wonder if there was any human agency in that. Of course, many times this is just lyrics to a psalm, but if you think about people who have been sprung out of jail, I bet there was. Who knows? Whatever the ancient equivalent was, some public defender said I’m going to take up your case. Somebody said I’m going to fund this defense. I’m going to get you out of here. Somebody came in and some Robin Hood saved you from this situation. You got yourself in trouble. God used someone to get you out.

 

And then what? Verse 15, do the right thing. “Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of man! For he shatters the doors of bronze and cuts in two the bars of iron.” I hope that any real Christian who is on the receiving end of the generosity of another Christian, I hope that you don’t need much training from Psalm 107 to know that it’s time to drop to your knees and give thanks to the living God for his steadfast love to you. It happens all the time. It’s really built into the fabric of the history of almost every Christian. If you live long enough in the Christian life there are times in your life where this has happened. And I think in my own life, back in 1988, I was done with my undergrad. I was going to go to seminary and come back to California where I grew up. And so I put my resume out. I had a job offer in L.A. County, a job offer in San Bernardino County, and a job offer in Orange County. And I interviewed at all three. And the church in L.A. County had a flush budget. The church in San Bernardino County had a flush budget. And then I interviewed at the church in Orange County and they had a really tight budget and the church was really small.

 

But the pastor, I thought, this pastor’s great. I loved him, 65 years old, he was a little bit older, but man he had a heart for evangelism, discipleship. I connected with him. Our hearts were knitted together in the interview. I thought this was a great place. Then I learned they really didn’t have any money to hire me. I thought, well, this is awesome. I was recently married. I kind of needed a paycheck. I could have taken the other two jobs but I really felt like this is the place I had to be, South Orange County. Not because of the beaches, not because of anything else. It was all because of the guy. I thought, I want to work with this guy. And somebody stepped up. A businessman from Newport Beach, he didn’t go to the church, but he said well, if I interviewed the guy, the kid, that’s who I was, a kid, I’ll pay his salary for the first year, I’ll pay half a salary for the second year and a quarter of his salary for the third year. So I interviewed with this guy. He said, okay, I’ll do it. He never came to our church. He just knew the need of the church. He knew the pastor. He paid for my first three years, part of my salary, full salary the first year.

 

And at the time those three years were over, obviously, things had radically changed. The church was on its way, the church had radically changed. And I just will tell you, humanly speaking, I wouldn’t be standing on a platform in South Orange County, California were it not for Don from Newport Beach. One guy, with a generous heart, wanted to help a church. I don’t know how much of a sacrifice it was for him, but I’ve thanked God many times for Don knowing that God had opened a door for me to do ministry with the right person at the right time. And looking back at the circumstances it was because of one person, humanly speaking, who was generous enough to care about a church he didn’t even go to. And I praise God for one person with a generous heart who cared about one Christian he didn’t even know. I had one meeting with him and he said I want to invest for the good of the kingdom.

 

And you look at institutions, go read the history of Dallas Theological Seminary and the cattle sales that took place at just the right time, or the oil salesmen, the oil brothers who funded Biola, or the things that went on with Quaker Oats with Moody in Chicago. You can go on and on and on and on. None of these things happened without people, key people at the right time stepping up to be generous. And you know what? People have been blessed and people looking back have thanked God. Praise and worship literally have been predicated and founded on people who have been generous to make these things happen. This is how God works. And praise has just like… you want to talk about the, you know, cause-and-effect of a pinball machine, you know, the thing when one ball drops and levers and buttons and lights flash and bells ring because of one act of generosity worship takes place. The word “glorify,” that’s a good word. I know it’s lost on people sometimes because it seems so ambiguous. When it says in our passage, look at it again, “By their approval of this service, they will glorify God.” What do you mean? They just give a thumbs up, they give an approval, and they glorify God. Thanksgiving. Very specific. Glorify God. That’s bigger.

 

Do you remember the glory of God settling in on the temple or the tabernacle? And then do you remember Ichabod, that Hebrew word Ichabod, that the glory had departed? The glory would settle when everything was good and copacetic and right, and then the glory would depart when it was bad, when those things were off, like sin. Right? This is a good, like, theological-like phrase for it. Sin is like the way things shouldn’t be, right? Things shouldn’t be like that. That’s sin, things are wrong. But the glory of God is like a good description of the way things should be. In fact, in the New Testament, the word sometimes describes something beautiful. Even as Jesus sat there and talked about the lilies of the field, he used the word “Doxa,” the word for glory. It’s beautiful. It’s right. It’s just the way it ought to be. It’s like you walking into your kitchen and it’s not covered with junk. It’s beautiful. It’s sparkling clean. It’s been cleaned. There’s a vase full of beautiful, freshly cut flowers. It’s glorious. And here they’re saying they see people, in this case, well-to-do Corinthians, sacrificing their summer vacations to take care of the suffering Christians in Jerusalem. And they give a thumbs up and say they glorify God. They feel the rightness of it all.

 

I love this from First Timothy Chapter 3. It talks about the Church is the pillar and the foundation, or the buttress of truth that holds the truth up and the Church when it’s functioning right, someone comes to a church that’s working in the way it ought to, it just feels right. It’s just good and it feels like glory. And we respond to it by glorifying God. And, you know, when the church is off and the church is off when people are, there are lots of things we could look at, but certainly when they’re tight-fisted and they have a wrong view of money, when they’re not open-handed, they don’t share, they’re not generous, they don’t give. This whole series has been about the joy of generosity, and the joy of generosity when it’s firing on all cylinders, it’s a glorious place to be. And people glorify God. They give it a thumbs up. They approve it. This is a good place. The love of God is not in word and talk. It’s in deed and in truth. When the church is doing what it ought to do, it certainly is a glorious place, and people who see it glorify God.

 

All right, two more verses real quick. Second Corinthians Chapter 9 verses 14 and 15. It says, “while they,” they’re going to be grateful that you’ve submitted to what you’ve said and you say you’ve confessed the gospel and you’ve submitted to that, and you’ve given this generous contribution, “while they long for you and pray for you because of the surpassing,” there’s our word again, “grace of God upon you.” Ten times and two chapters this word “Charis,” grace shows up and one time tucked away privately you won’t see it there in verse 15, but the first word in the sentence, “thanks” is a repetitive use again of the word charis, grace. This whole theme has been grace used in different ways, but grace. And he says all this grace of God upon you, the grace of God endowing you with the ability to do it, the grace of God opening up your hands to do it, and all of this grace that God is showing through you, all this grace that God has shown to you, he said all of this has made them, “long for you and pray for you.” People who can’t even imagine their faces in their mind’s eye because they’ve never met the Corinthian Christians. They’ve only heard about the Corinthian Christians, and some of them hadn’t heard anything about them. They just know there are some Christians across the Mediterranean. That’s it.

 

Think about this. They long for them. That’s a strong word. They desire them. They’d love to be with them if they could, they’d love to have dinner with them and they pray for them. I wonder how many people pray for you regularly. How many people long for you? Do you know what giving and generosity does? It makes that happen. It really draws people together. It unifies people. It deepens their fellowship. Just to get back to that word. Number three on your outline, you have to “Realize Your Generosity Deepens Fellowship.” It builds your relationships. It enhances your friendships. It makes your connections what they ought to be. If you’re a generous Christian you can have better relationships with other Christians. It’s just going to be the way it is. People are going to “long for you.” They’re going to “pray for you.” It’s just a natural part of what it means. Your Christian friendships will be enriched. It’s hard for you to bear a grudge against someone who’s been generous to you. It’s hard for you to listen to the gossip against someone who’s open-handed towards you. That’s really tough. I mean the goodness of what it means to love someone in deed and in truth, going the extra mile, staying the extra hour, spending the extra dollar, it’s really, really hard to have any kind of vehement hostility or barriers against that person. That’s the way God intended it. Generosity binds people together. It pulls them together.

 

There’s a principle in this, I think, that Jesus was getting at, in part, I know he was speaking about treasure in heaven in Matthew Chapter 6 verse 21. But when he says this, think about it in other ways. He says, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Where your treasure is, your heart will be also. It talks about storing up for yourselves “treasure in heaven.” Well, I get that, right? I want to care about eternal things. I want to care about things that matter in terms of the kingdom of God and his righteousness. But here’s one thing about the kingdom of God and his righteousness is he cares about the people of God and the people who are going to the kingdom of God. And here’s the thing, when you invest in the people of God, when you care about the household of faith, when you care about the saints, when you’re engaged in things that feel like worship itself, the liturgy. You’re doing things that are the service for the good of God’s people, when you’re ministering to them by doing the things that we’ve been talking about. Right? There’s just something about getting your heart there that is really seeking the things that are going to put your heart in the same place.

 

Put it this way, you invest in a company, right? You’re going to be checking to see how that company is doing all the time, right? If you invest in a stock you’re going to be checking it all the time. That’s just how it works, right? If you gamble on a particular team, which I advise you not to do, I guarantee you’re going to check how they’re doing, see how they’re winning or see how they’re losing. Your heart’s going to be there. Now, if you invest in people you’re going to pray for them. You’re going to want to spend time with them. When you invest in things that matter in church, let’s think of vertical giving, let me put it this way. The flaky church attenders are probably not significant givers to the church. Let me put it that way. I can say that as an axiomatic statement. People who make it their habit to be a part of their church, they are substantial givers to their church, proportionately. When you invest you want to be a part of it. And when you invest in people, when you give to meet needs, when you give like the Shunammite woman and you’re just trying to enhance because you’re generous toward them, you’re going long for them, you’re going to pray for them.

 

Speaking of doxa, that great concept of glory, we often call these outbursts of worship, like in Second Corinthians Chapter 9 verse 15, doxologies, you’ve heard that word, the old hymn that used to be sung at the end of a lot of church services in terms of liturgy, that was a liturgical use of that old hymn. Doxology is an expression of praise. And this is in the first person here, Paul is saying, “thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!” This is Paul interjecting here. And so we can look at it this way that Paul is even being led to a kind of expression upward here. Yeah, let’s just all think, thanks be to God for his incredible giving. And in that sense, our fellowship is not only increased horizontally, but even Paul is being led to do what was talked about earlier, to worship God.

 

But because he is the ultimate giver, I just want us to think too that we are connecting with Christ in the way that Second Corinthians Chapter 8 verse 9 said, we’re reflecting the character of God. “For God so loved the world that he gave.” I mean, this is so fundamental to who God is, right? Christ put the interests of sinners before himself. He “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” All of those things when I start to do what he did, “he laid down his life for us, we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.” That picture of giving becomes the thing that lets me reflect him. I’m going to not only thank him more fully like he’s being thankful. We’re going to thank God more profoundly when we start giving and when Paul’s even just watching and thinking and imagining the giving that’s going to happen in Corinth, he’s excited about praising God. He’s thanking God more. But when we start giving and the Corinthians start giving, we’re going to reflect Christ more perfectly, more clearly. Your fellowship with God will certainly be enriched, just like your fellowship with other Christians is going to be enriched. You “walk in the light, as he’s in the light,” and there’s no way to do that without being a generous Christian.

 

This series has really not been about budgets and money. I mean, it’s obviously intersected those things. It wasn’t about denarius and bronze coins and all that. Paul has really been dealing with hearts and spiritual habits, priorities about sanctification. And for me it’s been the same. I’ve wanted this to be about our virtue of being a generous Christian. There’s joy in that. There’s progress in that. Having a spiritual Christian habit that I just know as we end this will start a cascade of impact that can go beyond our lifetime, a chain reaction that will matter years from now. And it just starts with your mindset. And since we don’t talk about this all the time, you’re going to have to carry this forward. And I hope in your small groups this week you can discuss how to keep this going, how to keep this in the forefront of your minds, how to make sure you keep your eyes open. It’s one thing just to kind of settle into a vertical giving but we have to keep our eyes open and creatively think about our horizontal giving. Make this a pattern. It becomes addictive. You will enjoy it. You will find joy in it. You will become a cheerful giver and God will be very happy about it. The Lord loves a cheerful giver.

 

Let’s pray. God, help us in this series as we digest it and think about it as you call it to mind in the future. We move on to Second Corinthians Chapter 10 and all the good things that are there for us. I just pray that you would help us to put this into our arsenal of knowledge, that we would say we want to be good doers of the Word. We know knowledge puffs up, but love edifies. We want to put all of this information into action, which is what love is all about. It’s a verb. It’s something we do. We want to be good givers. We want to be joyful givers. We want to be liberal givers. Be the kind of people who constantly find ways to edify and encourage others. God, let us be your hands and your feet as has often been said, that we can be a blessing to others. I think so much for your kindness to us. Thanks so much for your grace and generosity toward us. May we always remember to say thank you to you for all of your amazing gifts to us, and may we always remember that even the agency of individuals who have played an important role in our lives, may we seek to do the same in other people’s lives. God, dismiss us now after this last song with a sense of your presence and empowerment to do your will.

In Jesus’ name. Amen.